Opinion on marketing, media & more by Kevin Dugan / @prblog since 07.02

04/04/2012

With 1 million downloads made in the first 24 hours of its release, Instagram's long-awaited Android app has clearly been well-received.

The Android release was a bit of a tidal wave as you can only access the platform via its mobile app or using your app login to use web-based options that tap into the Instagram API.

More users mean more potential for your audience being on the platform. So here's a quick recap of Instacontent, from here and elsewhere, to help users get their sea legs with an app that's gotten a serious second-wind.

But before you follow everyone's well-documented lead, ask how this fits into your larger social > online > marketing > business strategy. If it doesn't roll all the way up, it's not worth investing time and resources.

Manage Your Feed:Statigr.am, by far, looks to be the best way to manage your feed, track statistics and even organize your photos and the people you follow into lists. It even allows you to message each other users through the site, gives you promotional tools and promotes contests from other brands and users.

Use Supporting Apps: If you're taking pics with your phone, you can access a handful of apps to make your images stand out and better represent what you're trying to communicate. And there's a lot of Instatips too to help you optimize your use of Instagram.

Back that Pic Up: You'll want to have a backup copy of your photos, right? Well Google+ app users have it easiest as Google+ can automatically backup your phone's pics. But there's also options for Dropbox users and everyone else.

Take It Elsewhere: Some brands are tapping into the API-provided portability of Instgram content. Starbucks streams relevant user pics into its online Coffeehouse. And any user can easily stream their pics into a Tumblr or onto Facebook for non-Instafans to check out their work. And don't forget sites like Animoto make it easy to turn your pics into a video.

Go Offline: Photowalks are a great way to get a handle on the app and its potential. I've organized two of them and they're fairly simple to execute. If you're not about socializing in real time, you can still use any number of sites to print your pics in a number of ways. I've used CanvasPop forexample and highly recommend it.

It's Deja Vu All Over AgainWith apologies to Yogi Bera, I'm already seeing a lot of Twitter "how-to" content becoming relevant again. From filling out your profile and using an avatar to posting content before following a ton of people -- many of those basics apply here (and to Pinterest!). You can even project an Instafeed by user or hashtag, to create a visual back channel at events.

How's that for a link-laden, to-do list? It's not even taking into account Instagram-related content I've curated on Pinterest and Scoop.It. There's a lot of opportunity and creativity in this site. If your audience is not on it, you can still use it for your own personal reward.

06/21/2011

Six months and more than 215 photos later, I now enjoy using my mobile phone to take pictures as much as I enjoy using my digital camera. And in doing so I join more than five million users of a photo app less than eight months old.

What’s the big deal? Some suggest it’s Polaroid nostalgia. But the app’s power is in its utility, simplicity and community. Instagram is an easy to use, but powerful, social camera. It allows you to point, click, edit using one of 11 filters and share all within a single app. It’s essentially a microblogging platform focused solely on pictures.

Regardless of what you call it, Instagram introduces you to its community and their stories one photo at a time. Here are 10 things I’ve learned using Instagram that will make your experience with this app even better.

1) Community: Check out Instagramers.com to meet new, passionate fans. Created by Phil Gonzalez, the site features users and includes tips, tutorials and a photo of the day contest. It’s a great way to connect with people and to see how creative users are getting within the apps constraints. Or if Facebook is more your style, check out the Instagram Community fan page.

3) Stats & Back (that pic) Up Hacks: Instagram’s open API has inspired a flurry of sites that create a richer web-based experience for this app. There are more than I can list in a single post without losing your attention. But if you only check out one, make it Statigram. It provides you with analytics around your Instagram account.

For those of us that want to back up our photos for archival purposes or just to make it easier to share with others, we have a couple of options. Facebook fans can use Instasync to create a Facebook Photo Album. Dropbox users can tap into Instadrop to automatically make a copy of your Instagram pics as they’re posted. Or use Copygram (currently in beta) for a more universal back up option. These are great when you find yourself with too many pictures on your phone.

4) Flickr: Yep, for me, Instagram and Flickr provide two different things. In this case, head over to Flickr and check out the Instagram group. If you’d like to mash up the two sites, Gramjunction is worth checking out. Juan Sanchez tapped the Insta-API to create a site that takes your Flickr pics tagged with Instagram and serves them up in a stream. Clicking through takes you to the Flickr page/account for that photo. This allows Flickr Fans to continue to focus on their site of choice and still parse out their instagram pics.

5) Instaview Sites: By far the web-based sites allowing users to interact with and view Instagram pics are the most popular choice for developers tapping into the API. There are a ton of these “Instaview sites,” but most require you to be a member of Instagram to access them.

7) InstaMake Sites: If you thought the novelty view sites were cool, a host of sites take it offline to create Instagram souvenirs. Teeny Tile and Stickygram offer magnetic attraction. Instatees and IGTees let you wear your Instagrams. Hatchcraft and Keepsy allow you to frame your pics or make them into a scrapbook.

8) Challenges: I can frame this section up with a single name: Josh Johnson. @JoshJohnson is a photographer with daily tips and a rotating set of photo challenges that get the Instagram community congregating from around the world. Challenges are one of the best ways to engage with Instagram (participation = social media satisfaction, hmmm, sounds like a meme) But while Josh is the most active and prolific Instgramer I know, Spenser Kaufman @deceivexxdeny, also provides some interesting opportunities amongst others.

9) Tag It: Much like Twitter, hashtags are a critical device with this app. They’re used very creatively on Instagram to tell stories. All of the challenges rely on tags and tagging your location is a great way to meet folks in your community using Instagram. That can come in handy for photowalks.

10) Photowalks: Photowalks take the Instagram community offline and in person -- where it's most important and powerful. They're an amazing way to get inspired, meet other photographers and take a ton of pics. There was a global Instameet earlier this year. But you don’t have to wait until next year to have one. Just head to Instameet and create your own. Or find one to participate in. Psst, the Cincinnati Instameet is on Saturday, June 25th. Join us!

03/24/2011

Post-SXSWi, I've recovered and even dug out a bit. There's still a metric ton of content I want to post. But I will point you to some posts I wrote as a contributor to The Cincinnati Enquirer's SXSW blog during the event.

During the melee in Austin, David Binkowski, Krista Neher, Saul Colt and I sat on a panel to discuss the topic of influence. Below is the director's cut of slides. We did not get through all of them, so I added a few as well as some links for reference in the speaker notes. I went long in the Slideshare version as we addressed some of the questions folks were asking on Twitter. We just ran out of time before we could answer them.

In discussing what Influence is NOT, we got into celebrity influence. This brought up everyone from Charlie Sheen (popular vs. influential), Ashton Kutcher (broad/absolute influence) and Kenneth Cole (did his errant tweet have a positive impact?), to Klout (one site can't do all the work), Chrysler (a missed opportunity for the brand to be human) and Kim Kardashian (relative influence with a specific group).

Fast Company Throws DownOne reason we ran long was a special, unexpected guest. Fast Company Senior Editor Mark Borden discussed the panel singling out the Fast Company Influencer Project in our session description. "Influence 'experiments' like Fast Company's project do more harm than good when it comes to defining and measuring influence." Borden's point is that the project was test and learn...and Fast Company did learn from it. Good point. And in hindsight the fact that we didn't ask Mark to sit on our panel is a miss. We're glad he stopped in.

But we stand by our comment. I have more of an issue with social voting projects as a whole. As I've said here previously "When we ask consumers to vote, generate content, watch a video or otherwise, we need to ask if we're merely creating a transaction to generate a metric. And if the answer is not clear, well, it probably is clear.

Social efforts like voting campaigns can be executed well and can have an impact. They can also do nothing more than preserve one-way communication between a brand and a consumer. We tend to over think this to achieve an easily-generated quantitative metric."

Recaps, Cases & TweetsIn addition to what we did talk about, one case study I wanted to discuss focused on how to find influencers. A team of folks at my employer used a process we have in place to create a blogger outreach list. It was trained on the top 20 influencers discussing DIY, home design/improvement projects. You can see more in the slides on how the list was created and the impact it ultimately had on the results.

"Instead of counting the people who reach, reach the people who countMy colleague's quote helps me conclude this post. There's no silver bullet, automagic shortcuts for finding influencers. While we'd (always) love better data to measure at a more exact level -- to identify different influencers at different points in a consumer's brand interactions for example -- it's a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures.

Key influencers are more than likely different for each situation/brand/project. Tie it all back to business goals and you'll be able to focus your efforts if nothing else.

While I thought I'd be noting how much has changed since it was written, it still holds up. But I've edited it a bit to better reflect 2011.---Everyone wants to know the secret formula to pitching blogs. The secret is it takes more than pitching.

While many approach bloggers and journalists similarly, there's as much different about them as there is similar. From the amount of time needed to pitch and where each group fits in a strategy to the materials and approach taken, there's a difference.

As blog-savvy firms forge ahead, here are six questions you should be able to answer in the affirmative before you start pitching a blog. Have you...

Read more than the most recent post of the blog?

Searched the blog for your client or relevant product/service/industry terms to see if they are even covered?

Subscribed to the blog’s RSS feed or e-mail delivery to make it easier to follow over time and to boost their audience metrics?

Left a comment on the blog that continues the discussion and is unrelated to your pitch?

Does this read like a lot of work? Keep in mind you're building a relationship, not "puking swag all over bloggers and expecting them to clean it up."**

If your news doesn’t merit this level of effort, don’t pitch it to a blog. This will eliminate a few of the irrelevant news releases many blogs receive.

If you answered no to any of the above, you may need to ramp up your approach to mainstream media first. Here are four tips.

Send a reporter a relevant story idea or a lead that has nothing to do with your client. It builds the relationship and turns you into a source. This increases the odds you’ll be sought out for a story in the future.

Does this read like a lot of work? Well as the definition of a media outlet morphs, so must our approach to engaging with them. And as more and more bloggers extend the olive branch, the price of a bad pitch is increasing -- less coverage, whiny bloggers, angry clients and amused competitors.

**This is a paraphrased quote from blogger Andrea Deckard when she noted successful brands and agencies are building relationships. But "many brands still puke swag all over bloggers and expect them to clean it up."

01/03/2011

One trend that’s taking place as you read this, one with big implications for brands in 2011, is media convergence.

Digital technology is dissolving the silos used to organize media types and media channels. Paid, owned and earned media (POEM) are blending together across channels that are much more fluid and flexible than ever before – once again due to digital technology.

Empower MediaMarketing is tracking media convergence throughout the year and we created this video to kick things off.

10/20/2010

At SummitUp yesterday, I discussed integrating paid, owned, earned and, as a result, social media.

Media Mash Up: Integrating Chaos** -- became a fitting title for my presentation as I've realized how much change is threading through media. Classifying media types by silos, buckets or Venn diagrams is no longer possible. Even AdAge refers to it as "whatever it is that we're defining as media these days."

To integrate across media, marketers must be more flexible about how content, consumers and technology connect with a brand.

Serious karma found Pete Blackshaw laying groundwork for my presentation when he presented the following slide in his keynote presentation earlier that day. "His We Can No Longer Silo Media" slide details how a brand can drive earned media through paid or earned channels. This is something we've been discussing for awhile and it's interesting to see how it's evolved in just a year's time.

Clear as MudSocial Media can be triggered by paid, earned or owned media. And social media can also be paid, earned or earned media. It's clear that social media is messy. It disrupts silos -- media silos as well as operational silos in a company. Social media is not linear. It is a paradox. Is it shared media? Yes. Spreadable media? Yes. But it's not something a PowerPoint slide can capture with some Smart Art. Not yet.

As consumers, content and technology continue to change, we need to spend more time studying our audience as well as their online and offline behaviors. Mapping this against the sales funnel makes it easier to consider how various media can connect with customers through this cycle.

Iteration or Irrelevancy?To better integrate something seemingly amorphous, we must plan for ongoing change. We must set aside resources, time and talent that can test and learn from the shiny new. If something new impacts business goals, it gets further consideration. Otherwise we risk losing focus on sites and technology that are getting a lot of industry attention. Planning for a constant of change is not second nature. It's not easy. But it's also the going premium for irrelevancy insurance.

** I kicked off the presentation with a mash up of Aerosmith and Alicia Keys to underscore how content and technology are meshing together to create some emotional connections with consumers. And I ended the presentation giving out examples of the first mash up we experience growing up. Music and candy go a long way to impact your speaker feedback forms.

08/24/2010

As Ricky Van Veen notes, people are more into recording the trip to Disney World than the trip itself. A socially-inclined, smartphone-toting park guest could check in on Foursquare, record their mouse-inspired lunch on Foodspotting and brag about their Phineas and Ferb t-shirt on Barcode Hero.

This is a nice change of pace because normally they're just logging in their Phineas and Ferb TV time on Tunerfish. And it doesn't have to stop there, with apps like Stickybits and Layar the park guest has even more opps to record actions deemed private by most of us.

Even one of the most private actions of all can now be recorded thanks to Sit or Squat (an inductee into the brand utility hall of fame, imho).

We've gone from a society that fears the documentation of our actions by an organization to one that willingly records and shares them with social media sites.

I'm obviously comfortable doing so. But even I have limits as to what I share online. Surprised?

I'm not suggesting we rethink this, jump off the grid and start lining our hats with aluminum foil. But as consumers we need to think about our information sharing in the big picture. Consumers get a sense of entitlement with free sites like Facebook and Twitter. But your privacy is a participation sport. And this is bigger than game mechanics. Spend some time with the terms of service around the sites with which you share information.

Thankfully there are people much smarter than me dedicated to following the topic of privacy. They can help. Belly up to this site and spend some quality time.

06/25/2010

This research from Get Response tracks with my own experience: “A distinct minority of small-to-mid-sized-business (SMB) marketers use social media links or icons in their promotional emails.” And I’ll argue that even larger businesses do not consider steps like this…not instinctively.Marketers are so busy, we can sometime think in silos. It’s a result of focusing on a project. It’s understandable and I think it happens even more in social media. Most everything we read notes how we need new rules for social media and how different social media is so it’s no surprise that we sometimes throw golden rules out the window as we create new rules.New tools usually do require new tools. For example, social media is an engagement tool, not an awareness tool. And you can tell which brands understand this by ticking through their Facebook pages. Which brands are trying to engage you and which ones are simply broadcasting the same message in a different channel? But some golden rules do not change. Audience and goals win the day no matter what medium you’re knee deep in. Brands have hard-earned touch points established with their customers. The email newsletter mentioned in the research above is usually one of those touch points.Marketers need to step back from the retweets and Like counts and look across these touch points. A 360 degree view lets you see unnecessary duplication as well as untapped opportunities. Doing this would drive down the results from Get Response’s research I suspect.So let’s think in Venn Diagrams and not in silos.Perhaps to a fault, I’m a very visual thinker. I tend to sketch my ideas (poorly) to explain them and to test their validity. As a result the Venn Diagram and I became fast friends somewhere in between when John Venn created them and before they became pop culture icons. It’s just one tool we can use to remind us to step back and take in the view from time to time.Posted to my work blog, Social Study

04/18/2008

As information disperses wildly/widely through personal channels, marketers must revert from “sticky” mentality to “slippery.” Sticky websites require lures and hooks to get people to our sites and then lock them in. Slippery ideas enable wide distribution of our brand into daily life (Originally articulated by Mark Earls via Fallon’s Aki Spicer).

A client, er, someone might ask -- why create profiles on video/photo sharing sites and social networks when you have a perfectly good website?

The answer to this question is the Jeep Experience site. The Jeep brand planted its flag on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr over time. Rather than a heavy-handed approach, Jeep merely facilitates online fan gatherings and consumer-generated Jeep content.

Jeep now aggregates all of this content at the Jeep Experience. It brilliantly illustrates the slippery over sticky approach. Back in the (dot com) day, a brand would try and build the Jeep Experience site and spend tons of money attracting eyeballs. It would cost you twice as much and be half as effective. This is generous math if you consider Bud.TV as a more recent example of a sticky content play.

Even more recently, Tommy Hilfiger launched TommyTV. Music is being used to sell everything from coffee to deodorant, so why not clothes as well?

TommyTV has the right goal -- to make an emotional connection with its customers. But the execution still feels like a brand hoping the sticky approach works instead of giving up control. TommyTV has a YouTube presence, but it’s downplayed on the site.

So clean up your act online and go from sticky to slippery like Jeep (who gets the Gallant). For trying to have its cake and eat it too/2.0, TommyTV gets the Goofus.